A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from December 30, 2007
Gringolandia

“Gringolandia” is the “land” of the “Gringos” (“Americans” or “Yankees”). “Gringolandia” today most often refers to the United States of America. However, in the 1920s, “Gringolandia” was used to refer to the Mexican city of Tampico and its Americanized influences.
   
Some Texas cities (such as Austin) have been called “Gringolandia” because of a large Anglo population.
   
   
Double-Tongued Dictionary
Gringolandia
n. the United States of America.
Etymological Note: Mexican Spanish gringo ‘Yankee; English-speaking North American’ + landia (suffix indicating ‘place’)
   
Urban Dictionary
gringolandia
spanish: the united states
¿nos vamos a cruzar a gringolandia en la noche?
by el chingon de chingones Mar 24, 2003
 
Google Books
Mexico
by Frank George Carpenter
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company
1924
Pg. 258:
Today Tampico is the most American city in Mexico and the Mexicans themselves call it “Gringolandia.”
 
Google Books
North America: Its People and the Resources, Development and Prospects
by Joseph Russell Smith
New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company
1925
Pg. 772:
...managed by Americans, the supplies coming from America, the oil going largely to America, with all these things in Tampico, it is no wonder that the Mexicans call it “Gringolandia,” Gringo being Mexican for American, somewhat as “Greaser” is applied by Americans to the Mexican.
 
21 March 1969, Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, pg. B1, col. 1:
“Hello” brags they do things like that a lot cheaper down there than in “Gringolandia.”   
 
1 May 1969, Panama City (FL) Herald, “Mexico Is Being Plagued By Many Problems,” pg. 8B, col. 3::
Still, many Mexicans believe their country has become, in the age of decolonization, a colony of the United States. Some call it Gringolandia.
 
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Oral History Interview With
Jacinto Quirarte
In Helotes, Texas
August 15 & 16, 1996
Interviewer: Paul J. Karlstrom
(...)
JQ: Yes, so it permeated the life of every Mexican family. To this day at the University of Texas at Austin, which is almost . . . or I should say, at one time used to be called “Gringolandia”—or what I thought is where “Gringolandia” started, since San Antonio culturally was where Latin America started. Austin is bounded on the western side by a street named Guadalupe. So it’s Guadalupe Street. All the streets in cities founded from one end of the Southwest to the other had a Guadalupe Street. Well, this is totally alien to just about every non-Spanish-speaker in Texas and anyone else who comes to Texas, and so we know that street as “Guadaloop” [pronounced “Gwa-da-loop”—Ed.].

Posted by Barry Popik
Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Sunday, December 30, 2007 • Permalink


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